English

The Boron Buckyball has an Unexpected Th Symmetry

Other Condensed Matter 2007-12-11 v2

Abstract

The boron buckyball avoids the high symmetry icosahedral cage structure. The previously reported Ih symmetric structure is not an energy minimum in the potential energy surface and exhibits a spontaneous symmetry breaking to yield a puckered cage with a rare Th symmetry. The HOMO-LUMO gap is twice as large as the reported value and amounts to 1.94 eV at B3LYP/6-31G(d) level. The valence orbital structure of boron buckyball is identical to the one in the carbon analogue.

Cite

@article{arxiv.0708.2331,
  title  = {The Boron Buckyball has an Unexpected Th Symmetry},
  author = {G. Gopakumar and Minh Tho Nguyen and Arnout Ceulemans},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0708.2331},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

10 pages, 1 Table, 2 Figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:08:15.496Z